


The Road Less Taken

by jessaverant



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Ensemble Cast, Hetalia Kink Meme, Hitchhiker Alfred, Lots of feelingsTM, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV First Person, Past Giripan, Past USUK - Freeform, Slow Burn, Will include smut later, past homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 13:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16745275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessaverant/pseuds/jessaverant
Summary: Kiku Honda is in the midst of a quarter-life crisis when he decides to take a cross-country road trip from California to New York. In Texas, he picks up a young cowboy-hat-wearing know-it-all hitchhiker, and decides to let him share the journey to the Big Apple. Do they fall in love?Of course they do.---A de-anon from 2011 from the Hetalia Kink Meme!





	The Road Less Taken

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this in 2011/2012 as a fill for the Hetalia Kink Meme. The prompt was for a hitchhiker/roadtrip AU with Japan picking up America on the way, an ensemble cast of characters, and plenty of feelings and slow burn. At least, that's how I interpreted the prompt. I left it unfinished in 2012 but it never quite left my head, and I found myself thinking of it from time to time, so now that I've joined the Ameripan Discord, it felt like the proper time to finish it. 
> 
> Originally titled "Show Me What You're Looking For" when it was on the kink meme.

I was twenty-four when I decided I was lost. Lost in only the way a twenty-four-year old can be; left listless by an unfulfilling career, dreams unmet decaying in my psyche, my first love gone… a soul left ragged. The evening I came to this conclusion, after ranting to my coworker about vendor invoices and bounced checks, I stormed to my backwater apartment and raided my cousin’s wine stash, much to her chagrin. It was her idea, after she found me lying down in the middle of our living room, to take a trip.

“A trip to where? Doing what?” I asked, smacking her thigh with the wide end of the prosecco bottle. Meimei tugged the bottle from my grip and placed it on the side table, glaring daggers in my direction.

“I don’t know, literally anywhere that isn’t  _ here, _ ” she said, running her fingers through her hair. “What about… uh…” she glanced around our tiny apartment for inspiration. “Atlanta?”

“What? No,” I said, throwing my arm in dramatic fashion over my eyes.

“Nashville?”

“Can you suggest someplace significantly  _ less _ Conservative?” I whined. Meimei scoffed and jumped to her feet, kicking my iPhone underneath the nearest table as she went. 

“What about, I don’t know… New York?” she said, looking at the wall calendar. It was three months behind and was a selection of carefully edited photographs of New York, New York, a place neither I nor Meimei had ever been. I pinched my lips together. “Well?”

That was a month ago. Sometime in the last month my  _ dear _ cousin had talked me into driving cross-country, from California to New York, in her dark-blue 1984 Chevy Silverado, that was mostly held together with a hope and a prayer. I traded her my silver Audi, and with a small journal and a promise of “you need to write down  _ everything _ you see!”, I was on my way. I had put in my two weeks notice, I had carefully told my parents the bare bones of my plans, and threw everything I could think of into the back of that truck.

And I left.

My first few days were uneventful. I drove south through California, hitting Arizona a day later. After a stint in Flagstaff, I arrived in Albuquerque to little fanfare. Due to Meimei’s truck being older than both of us, charging my phone as I went wasn’t a luxury I had, so I was dealing with a physical map and a half battery as I blazed through the rest of New Mexico. I knew Texas was going to be one of the more annoying stretches of land, since I was avoiding major cities and driving on what amounted to desert. 

I met him in Nazareth, Texas, on the third day.

I first noticed him because I was shocked at seeing  _ anyone _ trying to hitchhike, even if it was on a flat highway in a tiny Texas town. It was mid-June and my thick black hair was matted to my forehead with sweat, but he appeared perfectly in his element. Sunkissed skin, a  shock of golden locks from underneath a woven cowboy hat,  sporting dark aviator sunglasses and a lopsided grin. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder and a small suitcase leaning against his hip, holding his thumb out and proud. Every time a car or a truck breezed by him, that smile remained and he just watched them with contentment as they drove along.

“Do people actually still hitchhike around here?” I murmured to myself. The truck answered, annoyed that I had slowed down and not shifted the gear. A bright red SUV burst passed the young man with such speed that a cloud of dust floated up into his face, and he laughed as he waved it away. He was waiting across the street, just past the stoplight I was at. 

_ Pick him up, _ the part of my brain that was Meimei’s impulsiveness said.  _ He doesn’t  _ look  _ like a serial killer. _

_ Most serial killers don’t, _ I thought, but as the light turned green, I couldn’t help myself. I was drawn to him, somehow. In our later years he would ask me what made me stop on that day--I still don’t know. With a sigh, I crossed the intersection and slowed down on the side of the road.  I rolled down the window, pushed my hair out of my face and squinted into the sun.

“Need a ride?” I asked. The blond man perched on his forearms in the frame of the window, that same grin spreading from ear to ear.

“You offering?” he asked, a Texas twang hanging on the edge of his words. From up close I could see his slightly sunburnt nose and smattering of freckles that dusted his cheeks. He pulled the aviators from his eyes and tipped his hat back, revealing his full face to me. I must have made a weird face at the sight of his big sky-blue eyes because he laughed and tucked the sunglasses into the brim of his hat. “I promise I’m not sketchy!” 

“I  _ am _ offering,” I answered, flushing.  _ This stranger is very handsome _ . “Where to?” He didn’t answer; instead he shrugged, jumped off the edge of the truck and grabbed his sack, tossing it into the bed of the truck.  I furrowed my brow as he then pulled open the cab door and hopped beside me in the passenger seat, his backpack at his feet. He turned to me with a brilliant, toothy smile. 

“Name’s Alfred,” he said. “Alfred Franklin Jones.”

“Kiku Honda,” I replied. I wanted to shake his hand but my hands were glued to the steering wheel, and in that moment I felt that if I let go, all of reality would crash into me at once. _Have I seriously just picked up a hitchhiker?_ Alfred closed the door and buckled his seatbelt, his cowboy boots nestled snugly into the tiny cabin. I squeezed the steering wheel and gave him a terse nod, my cheeks still hot.

“You never mentioned where you wanted to go,” I said as I brought the truck out of idle and into drive. Alfred drummed his fingers along his thighs, pulling the aviators down back over his eyes as we went. 

“Depends on where you’re goin’,” Alfred responded. “Are you heading farther south or just going straight into Oklahoma or what? Because I can do Will Rogers or Fort Worth.” I was busy looking into my rearview at the eighteen-wheeler that was coming up too close to really register what he said.  For some reason, as soon as he got into the truck, I felt as if I had completely forgotten every rule of the road. 

“Um, what?” I asked as the eighteen-wheeler started gaining speed.

“Airports. Will Rogers or Fort Worth, whichever direction you’re going in, buddy,” Alfred said.

“Oh? Where are you going?” I asked. Alfred’s lips curled into that smile again and he looked longingly out of the windshield.

“New York, New York,” he said, with a hint of magic in his voice. “Where  _ these vagabond shoes, they are longing to stray, right through the very heart of it—New York, New York! _ ” Alfred then began mimicking the famous trumpet lick, buzzing about with his lips and humming deep in his throat.  “Sorry if I make your ears bleed.”

“Don’t worry about it,”  I said as the eighteen-wheeler roared past. I sighed heavily and wiped my face, cruising into the left lane at the next light to turn onto Route 168. I felt peculiar, but not in the way I thought I would; I felt strange because I  _ didn't _ feel anxious with Alfred in the Silverado beside me. And that, in turn,  _ made me anxious. _

“So, New York city, then?” I asked. Alfred leaned on his arm on the window, allowing the stiff breeze to blow his bangs back. 

“Yeah, so I gotta get a ticket there,” he said, winking. “Gotta make it to the Big Apple. Get outta Nazareth for the summer, y’know?”

“Don’t worry, I get it,” I replied. Then without thinking, I added “I’m going to New York, too.”

“You don’t say!” Alfred said with what sounded like genuine interest.  “Have you ever been before? I haven’t but I heard it’s a blast, just a really cool place. Did you know that more than  _ eight hundred languages _ are spoken in New York? It’s the most linguistically diverse city in the world! I  _ gotta _ check it out with that kind of data, y’know?” I said nothing, just focusing on the road ahead and turning that fact over in my brain.

“Oh,” was all I said in response. “That’s… I didn’t know that.” Alfred chuckled, pulling a pair of regular glasses from his backpack and placing them on his face. I’m not sure why I was surprised that this young cowboy wore glasses, but the spectacles reframed his face, making him look more… 

_ Attractive? _

Something.

“Yeah, New York is super fascinating,” he continued. “Oysters were so popular in the nineteenth century that the shells were used to pave an  _ entire street. _ Did you know what they called it?” I shook my head. “Pearl Street! Get it?” I snorted, cracking a smile.

“Okay, that  _ is _ kind of interesting…”

This kind of chatter continued until Alfred seemed to tire himself out, although before that I learned that Al Capone’s brother was a cop, how long sunlight takes to reach the earth, and an Alfred-to-Alfred discussion of where the image of a French maid came from.

After an hour I found that I had completely adapted to Alfred’s company. My inner paranoia was still reeling over my decisions, but I felt  _ comfortable. _ Granted, I didn’t have a chance to check his pack or anything like that, so for all I knew, he was carrying tons of cocaine and a switchblade in his boot. But something - intuition? Doubtful - told me he could be trusted. Alfred seemed to sense my inner turmoil, and he glanced back into the flatbed and then turned to me.

“You don’t have like, a chainsaw or somethin’ you’re gonna cut me up with, do you?” he asked. I turned and stared at him.

“Um, no,” I said, shaking my head a little bit. A blush crept across my cheeks. “I just have some of my stuff, and my cousin’s camping gear and I think a… cooler. And a toolbox.”

“Got hammers and screwdrivers in that toolbox?” Alfred asked, and he mimed a screwdriver being impaled into his gut. “You could shank me.”

“I  _ guess _ I could,” I muttered. I  _ really _ didn’t think I was someone  _ Alfred _ should be afraid of. He was a good five to six inches taller than me, and with the toned muscles peeking out from underneath his fitted tee… 

_ Focus, Kiku. _ I shook those thoughts from my head. Alfred watched, then shrugged and leaned back.

“Just thought I’d ask is all,” he said, closing his eyes.  He leaned his shoulder against the cab door, cowboy hat askew, and crossed his arms across his chest. We drove in silence, the only sounds the hum of the engine and the whipping of the wind at the windows. 

_ You should ask him to stay with you, _ the thoughts whispered.  _ You know you’ve been lonely these past few days, and you don’t know anyone in New York. He’s charming, entertaining, and you are very attracted to him. _

_ Hush, _ I thought back, cheeks darkening again. I stole a glance at Alfred, who had fallen asleep beside me. Okay, yes, he  _ was _ very good-looking, and he  _ had _ successfully charmed me in the two hours I’d known him. I turned off the highway and pulled into a Buc-ee’s parking lot, bringing the truck to a stop. 

“Alfred?” I said, turning to him. “Hey, Alfred?” Alfred, who had been leaning with his right cheek smushed against the window, suddenly gasped and sat up, his hat falling into his lap. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, rotating his shoulders to work out the kinks.

“Oh, Kiku! I’m sorry, did I fall asleep?” he asked, looking flustered. “Are we at the airport?”

“No,” I said softly. “Listen, Alfred, I was wondering… Would you, um, be interested in driving all the way to New York with me?” Alfred stared at me a moment, eyes round in surprise. Clearly, he hadn’t expected me to ask something like that.

“Me, drive with you? In this truck?” he asked, reaching up and rubbing the back of his neck. The tips of his ears were suddenly red. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble? ‘Cause the truth is I was  _ not _ looking forward to taking a plane. I’m not a big fan,” he admitted sheepishly. We sat in silence as the weight of the decision fell upon us both.  _ First I asked a stranger into my car. Now I’ve asked him to  _ stay  _ in my car? _

“I would appreciate the company,” I explained. “And besides, splitting the cost of rooms and such is a lot cheaper with another person.”

“Also, we can camp!” Alfred interjected, eyes lighting up. “You ever camp out in the bed of a pick-up?”

“Uh, no, can’t say I have,” I said, finally releasing the steering wheel from my iron grip. 

“It’s fun, I promise.” Alfred shifted, unbuckling himself from the seat and turning to face me fully. He extended his hand to me. “Sound good?”

“Yes,” I said, and I took his hand in mine. His grip was powerful and after two strong shakes, he let me go, turning back to the windshield. The sun had almost completely set, and dark red streaks decorated the horizon.

“As long as you promise not to murder me,” I added lamely. Alfred laughed, a musical sound I would come to adore. 

“Of course not, I’m a polite Southern gentleman,” he said, and he bowed in his seat. “An’ I’ve got all those northern European sensibilities in my ancestry. I wouldn’t hurt a fly!” I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. 

“I guess believe you,” I with a smile. “I’m Japanese, we’ve got that super-politeness thing going, too.” Alfred cocked his head to the side and considered me from the corners of his eyes. 

“Thought you were Japanese, with a name like ‘Honda,’” he said with a grin. “First generation?” he added. I shook my head.

“I was born in Japan, but my family moved here when I was really young to be closer to my mom’s family,” I explained. “I was raised bilingual, but I’ve lived pretty much my entire life here.”

“Explains the cute accent,” Alfred said. He said it so nonchalantly that I almost missed the compliment, but it made me blush all the same. “You’re gonna enjoy my company, Kiku, I promise. I’ve already been enjoying yours.”  _ Oh no, he’s  _ too _ charming, _ I thought as he stretched his arms above his head. How on earth he thought  _ my _ company was enjoyable was beyond me; I’d barely said anything the entire time he’d been in the truck. 

“Anyway, there’s a motel where one of my friend’s work about two miles away, we can probably stay there for ch—“ Alfred was cut off by a yawn. “Cheap. Heh. Getting up at the ass-crack of dawn isn’t working for me today.”

“Just let me know when it is,” I said, and he nodded as he curled up into the door of the truck. I brought the truck back to life, briefly considered ducking inside the Buc-ee’s, but decided against it, and roared back out onto the highway.

And thus ended the first day of my life with Alfred F. Jones.


End file.
